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Monday, April 02, 2012 By Catherine E. Lemel, staff writer/reporter
Clockwise, from top left: the Methboub family; Nicaragua's President Ortega; Pope Benedict XVI and Fidel Castro -
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Iraqi family celebrates wedding, good grades
The Methboub family, a family the Christian Science Monitor has been following of a couple of years, does not need to turn on the TV or even walk down the stairs to learn the fate of their hometown. Car bombs have been exploding all over the family’s district of Baghdad and the effect is felt everywhere. This however does not stop the family from celebrating.
The Methboub family has managed to remain whole through eight years of civil war, American occupancy, and Saddam Hussien’s oppressive rule, according the Christian science monitor. There have been some trying times, however, and in 2002 a son in the Methboub family was wrongly imprisoned and tortured two in a half years. Within the family there was also a daughter whose marriage ended in abuse and divorce. The sadness did not last long, however, because all eight children in the family had survived and their eldest son Mohamed was married on March 22, 2012. Two of the daughters have also gone to university. One of the daughters, Hibba, studies at the University of Baghdad and wants to become a psychologist's assistant when she graduates.
Teaching in Nicaragua still unpopular option despite attempted reforms
Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, has made education a major priority for his administration. However, their efforts have not changed the government's budget. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Nicaragua has the highest dropout rate and the lowest high school enrollment in the world. Ortega made it so education was free to all and deployed a nationwide effort to promote literacy and keep students in school.
These efforts are a start, but they are getting nowhere because of lack of funding and because of that, the education is not improving.Textbooks and classrooms are outdated and Nicaragua educators are the most underpaid professionals in the country. Teachers play a key role in getting students educated and when the salary can not even provide basic essentials the job becomes less popular. There was a salary increase projected but the teachers will have to wait at least 65 years for their sallaries to catch up to the national average.
Fidel Castro meets with Pope Benedict
In 1998 when the late Pope John Paul II met with Fidel Castro in Cuba, the church had hopes that it would bring fast political change to the island, like what happened when the pope visited Poland.However, that never happened according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The difference was that Poland had a greater Catholic population than in Cuba, a country taht was once officially atheist. Only half of Cubans actually identify themselves as Catholics and only ten percent actually practiced. Nearly 15 years later Pope Benedict is making the same rounds in a three day trip down to Cuba but instead of reforming the government the Pope is reinforcing a careful relationship with the Cuban government. This relationship strives for more openness and human rights without veering into opposition. The visit not only give Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro an air of legitimacy, but it also shows how much influence the Catholic church has in Cuba today.
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